Smith glanced uneasily between Jamie and the oncoming ship. Men were visible at the railings. Armed men.
“They have cannon and muskets, Mr. Smith,” Jamie said, throwing his coat overboard with a heave that sent it spiraling out onto the waves. “I’m no going to try to fight them for His Majesty’s ship. Run down that flag!”
Mr. Smith bolted, and began rooting among the myriad lines for the one connected to the Union Jack. Another boom came from the bow chasers, though this time a lucky roll of the sea carried us into a trough and both balls passed over us.
The colors came rattling down, to land in an ignominious heap on the deck. I had a moment’s scandalized, reflexive impulse to rush over and pick them up, but stopped myself.
“Now what?” I asked, an uneasy eye on the ship. It was near enough that I could make out the shapes of the gunners, who were definitely reloading the brass bow chasers and re-aiming them. And the men at the railings behind them were indeed bristling with armament; I thought I made out swords and cutlasses, as well as muskets and pistols.
The gunners had paused; someone was pointing over the railing, turning to call to someone behind him. Shading my eyes with my hand, I saw the captain’s coat, afloat on the rising swell. That appeared to have baffled the privateer; I saw a man hop up onto the bow and stare toward us.
What now? I wondered. Privateers could be anything from professional captains sailing under a letter of marque from one government or another to out-and-out pirates. If the vessel on our tail was the former, chances were that we would fare all right as passengers. If the latter, they could easily cut our throats and throw us into the sea.
The man in the bow shouted something to his men and hopped down. The ship had hauled her wind for a moment; now the bow turned and the sails filled with an audible thump of wind.
“She’s going to ram us,” Smith said, his tone one of blank disbelief.
I was sure he was right. The figurehead was close enough that I could see the snake grasped in the woman’s hand, pressed against her bare breast. Such is the nature of shock that I was conscious of my mind idly considering whether the ship was more likely named Cleopatra or Asp, when it passed us in a foaming rush and the air shattered in a crash of searing metal.
The world dissolved and I was lying flat, my face pressed into ground that smelled of butchery, deafened and straining for my life to hear the scream of the next mortar round, the one that would strike us dead center.
Something heavy had fallen on me, and I struggled mindlessly to get out from under it, to get to my feet and run, run anywhere, anywhere away… away…
I gradually realized from the feel of my throat that I was making whimpering noises and that the surface under my flattened cheek was salt-sticky board, not blood-soaked mud. The weight on my back moved suddenly of its own volition, as Jamie rolled off, rising to his knees.
“Jesus Christ!” he shouted in fury. “What’s wrong wi’ you!?”
The only answer to this was a single boom, this coming evidently from a gun at the stern of the other ship, which had passed us.
I stood up, trembling, but so far past simple fright that I noticed with a purely detached sort of interest that there was a leg lying on the deck a few feet away. It was barefooted, clad in the torn-off leg of a pair of canvas breeches. There was a good deal of blood spattered here and there.
“Holy God, holy GOD,” someone kept saying. I glanced incuriously to the side and saw Mr. Smith, staring upward with a look of horror.
I looked, too. The top of the single mast was gone, and the remains of sails and rigging sagged in a tattered, smoking mass over half the deck. Evidently the privateer’s gunports were not just for show.
Dazed as I was, I hadn’t even begun to ask myself why they’d done this. Jamie wasn’t wasting any time asking questions, either. He seized Mr. Smith by the arm.
“Bloody hell! The wicked nàmhaid are comin’ back!”
They were. The other ship had been moving too fast, I belatedly realized. She’d shot past as she unleashed her broadside, but likely only one of the heavy cannonballs had actually hit us, taking out the mast and the unfortunate Teal who’d been in the rigging.
The rest of the Teals were now on deck, shouting questions. The only answer was dealt by the privateer, who was now describing a wide circle, only too clearly meaning to come back and finish what she’d started.
I saw Ian glance sharply at the Pitt’s cannon—but that was plainly futile. Even if the Teal’s men included some with gunnery experience, there was no possibility of them being able to man the guns on the spur of the moment.
The privateer had completed her circle. She was coming back. All over the Pitt’s deck, men were shouting, waving their arms, crashing into one another as they stumbled toward the rail.
“We surrender, you filthy buggers!” one of them screamed. “Are you deaf?!”
Evidently so; a stray waft of wind brought me the sulfurous smell of slow match, and I could see muskets being brought to bear on us. A few of the men near me lost their heads and rushed belowdecks. I found myself thinking that perhaps that was not such a bad idea.
Jamie had been waving and shouting beside me. Suddenly he was gone, though, and I turned to see him running across the deck. He whipped his shirt off over his head and leapt up onto our bow chaser, a gleaming brass gun called a long nine.
He waved the shirt in a huge, fluttering white arc, his free hand clamped on Ian’s shoulder for balance. That caused confusion for a moment; the crackle of firing stopped, though the sloop continued her deadly circle. Jamie waved the shirt again, to and fro. Surely they must see him!
The wind was toward us; I could hear the rumble of the guns running out again, and the blood froze in my chest.
“They’re going to sink us!” Mr. Smith shrieked, and this was echoed in cries of terror from some of the other men.
The smell of black powder came to us on the wind, sharp and acrid. There were shouts from the men in the rigging, half of them now desperately waving their shirts, as well. I saw Jamie pause for an instant, swallow, then bend down and say something to Ian. He squeezed Ian’s shoulder hard, then lowered himself on hands and knees to the gun.
Ian shot past me, nearly knocking me over in his haste.
“Where are you going?” I cried.
“To let the prisoners out! They’ll drown if we sink!” he called over his shoulder, disappearing into the companionway.
I turned back to the oncoming ship, to find that Jamie had not come down off the gun, as I’d thought. Instead, he had scrambled round so his back was to the oncoming sloop.
Braced against the wind, arms spread for balance, and knees gripping the brass of the gun for all he was worth, he stretched to his full height, arms out, displaying his bare back—and the web of scars on it, these gone red with the blanching of his skin in the cold wind.
The oncoming ship had slowed, maneuvering to slide alongside us and blast us out of the water with a final broadside. I could see the heads of men poking up over her rail, leaning out from her rigging, all craning in curiosity. But not firing.
I suddenly felt my heart beating with huge, painful thumps, as though it had actually stopped for a minute and now, reminded of its duty, was trying to make up for lost time.
The side of the sloop loomed above us, and the deck fell into deep, cold shadow. So close, I could hear the talk of the gun crews, puzzled, questioning; hear the deep clink and rattle of shot in its racks, the creak of the gun carriages. I couldn’t look up, didn’t dare to move.
“Who are you?” said a nasal, very American voice from above. It sounded deeply suspicious and very annoyed.
“If ye mean the ship, she’s called the Pitt.” Jamie had got down from the gun and stood beside me, half naked and so pebbled with gooseflesh that the hairs stood out from his body like copper wires. He was shaking, though whether from terror, rage, or simply from cold, I didn’t know. His voice didn’t shake, though; it was filled with fury.
“If ye mean me, I am Colonel James Fraser, of the North Carolina militia.”
A momentary silence, as the master of the privateer digested that.
“Where’s Captain Stebbings?” the voice asked. The suspicion in it was undiminished, but the annoyance had waned a bit.
“It’s a bloody long story,” Jamie said, sounding cross. “But he’s no aboard. If ye want to come over and look for him, do so. D’ye mind if I put my shirt back on?”
A pause, a murmur, and the clicks of hammers being eased. At this point, I unfroze enough to look up. The rail was a-bristle with the barrels of muskets and pistols, but most of these had been withdrawn and were now pointing harmlessly upward, while their owners pressed forward to gawk over the rail.
“Just a minute. Turn about,” the voice said.
Jamie drew a deep breath in through his nose, but did so. He glanced at me, briefly, then stood with his head up, jaw clenched, and eyes fixed on the mast, around which the prisoners from the hold were now assembled, under Ian’s eye. They looked completely baffled, gaping up at the privateer, then looking wildly round the deck before spotting Jamie, half naked and glaring like a basilisk. Had I not begun to worry that I was having a heart attack, I would have found it funny.
“Deserter from the British army, were you?” said the voice from the sloop, sounding interested. Jamie turned round, preserving the glare.
“I am not,” he said shortly. “I am a free man—and always have been.”
“Have you, then?” The voice was beginning to sound amused. “All right. Put your shirt on, and come aboard.”
I could barely breathe and was bathed in cold sweat, but my heart began to beat more reasonably.
Jamie, now clothed, took my arm.
“My wife and nephew are coming with me,” he called, and without waiting for assent from the sloop, seized me by the waist and lifted me to stand on the Pitt’s rail, from where I could grab the rope ladder that the sloop’s crew had thrown down. He was taking no chances on being separated from either me or Ian again.
The ship was rolling in the swell, and I had to cling tightly to the ladder with my eyes closed for a moment, as dizziness swept over me. I felt nauseated as well as dizzy, but surely that was only a reaction to shock. With my eyes closed, my stomach settled a little, and I was able to set my foot on the next rung.
“Sail, ho!”
Tilting my head far back, I could just see the waving arm of the man above. I turned to look, the ladder twisting under me, and saw the sail approaching. On the deck above, the nasal voice was shouting orders, and bare feet drummed on the wood as the crew ran for their stations.
Jamie was on the rail of the Pitt, gripping me by the waist to save me falling.
“Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ,” he said, in tones of utter astonishment, and I looked over my shoulder to see him turned to watch the oncoming ship. “It’s the bloody Teal.”
A TALL, VERY THIN man with gray hair, a prominent Adam’s apple, and piercing ice-blue eyes met us at the top of the ladder.
“Captain Asa Hickman,” he barked at me, and then instantly switched his attention to Jamie. “What’s that ship? And where’s Stebbings?”